Aniya Wingate is a radiant and talented 17-year-old African American dancer from Houston, who was displaced from her home for half a year by Hurricane Harvey. Shoulders Deep translates her experience of displacement through dance, poetry, and performance.
Aniya Wingate is a radiant and talented 17-year-old African American dancer from Houston, who was displaced from her home for half a year by Hurricane Harvey. Shoulders Deep translates her experience of displacement through dance, poetry, and performance. Aniya’s fear, despair, and alienation give way to the salvation, comfort, and love of family and village, where she finds the support to transform trauma into artistic expression. The film is about the existential threat to our home in the era of climate chaos and the regenerative power of coming back home after disaster strikes. Love is central to Aniya’s journey of recovery, and her movement becomes the physical expression of that love. We are also in production on a feature documentary about Aniya, called Raising Aniya, which is a coming-of-age story that follows her development of a live performance about environmental justice and her experiences with Hurricane Harvey.